The phone hacking scandal illustrates the need for a free press in Britain
because it would not have been exposed without investigative reporting, the
country’s most senior judge said yesterday.

Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice, said while phone hacking was wrong the existence practise only emerged because of the ability of other journalists to investigate it.

The scandal has led to a judge-led Leveson inquiry to examine the future of the press and its current system of self-regulation, along with calls in some quarters for statutory control.

But Lord Judge yesterday launched a staunch defence of the independence of the press as a “constitutional necessity”.

He said a free press was the only acceptable system and its ability to expose scandal was “priceless”.

Lord Judge is the latest to defend the freedom of journalists just weeks before his colleague, Lord Justice Leveson, is expected to start hearing witness in his press inquiry.

In a speech to the Human Rights Law Conference in London yesterday he said an independent press will from time to time behave with “scandalous cruelty and unfairness” but on the same day another part of it will expose a scandal.

He said: “The scandal of telephone hacking which took the form of cruelty and insensitivity to one family and ultimately led to the setting up of the Leveson Inquiry was uncovered and revealed by a different constituent part of the press.

“The first of these scandals – the cruelty and unfairness – should never happen. The second – the revelation of a public scandal – must be allowed to continue to happen.

“My own view is that the public value of the second is priceless. Whatever means of regulation are designed to reduce the occasions of unacceptable behaviour by elements of the press they must not simultaneously, even if accidentally, diminish or dilute the ability and power of the press to reveal and highlight true public scandals or misconduct.”

He questioned claims that the hacking scandal showed self-regulation has failed.

He said any criminal activity by a journalist can be dealt with and prosecuted and that the General Medical Council is not labelled as failed self-regulation when something goes wrong, including even the Dr Harold Shipman murders.

Lord Judge said an independent press was as important as an independent judiciary and “fundamental to the continued exercise, and indeed the survival of the liberties which we sometimes take for granted”.

He said it was even the “right of every citizen” to have a free press.

He accepted that Lord Justice Leveson had “trodden into a minefield” but insisted he was the right man to carry out the inquiry.

He said even if criticisms of the current Press Complaints Commission (PCC) are justified it does “not automatically exclude self-regulation or a form of self-regulation in the future”.

“In other words, it does not follow that we should jump from the present system to government regulation.”

He raised the prospect, instead, of strengthening the PCC including giving it the power to order compensation and dictate the terms of an apology.